Emanuel Ax Performs Beethoven

Emanuel Ax solos in Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto — elegant, luscious, and spirited. Stéphane Denève brings his celebrated touch to works by fellow Frenchmen — Roussel’s muscular symphony and Ravel’s homage-with-a-twist to “The Waltz King,” Johann Strauss II — and to Jennifer Higdon’s <em>blue cathedral,</em> in memory of her brother. She writes: “This is a story that commemorates living and passing through places of knowledge and of sharing a...